


all the way down

by fadeastride



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-28
Updated: 2016-01-28
Packaged: 2018-05-16 22:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5843212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeastride/pseuds/fadeastride
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack lights up the ice and aces his tests and it's good, it's good, even if it isn't what it was supposed to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the way down

**Author's Note:**

> I keep sitting down with the notion to write something light and fluffy and all that comes out is this.

It’s not that Jack doesn’t want to talk to Kent. It’s that he doesn’t know what to say.

 _I’m sorry_ sounds too hollow. _I didn’t mean to do it_ sounds like a lie. 

So he ignores the texts, lets the calls go to voicemail, and tries to convince himself that it’s better this way. That it’s better for Kent this way. That he’s doing Kent a favor by not responding.

He goes to rehab, he hides out with his mother, he enrolls in school and Kent keeps calling.

Sometimes Jack listens to the messages, just because he feels like he owes Kent that much. Other times, he deletes them unheard.

He packs everything he cares about into his mom’s car and they drive to Samwell, radio turned down low and a comfortable silence stretching between them. 

He checks into the dorms with a cute blonde girl who gives him a set of keys and sends him upstairs to room 412.

His roommate is another guy from the hockey team, a guy with too much hair and a too-loud voice who doesn’t seem to care about Jack’s last name. When Jack tries to shake his hand, the guy pulls him into a hug.

It should be awkward, should set his hands to shaking, having some stranger touch him like this. But he hugs Jack like Jack is someone worth knowing, and he can’t stop himself from wrapping his arms around the guy.

His mom looks appalled that they roomed him with someone who introduces himself as _Shitty_ but, well. She’ll get over it.

Shitty is a lot of things, Jack learns quickly. He's smart and funny and sharp around the edges. He's opinionated and a little bit angry and swings to the left. 

Shitty doesn’t ask him questions about the past, threatens the people who do with unspeakable violence, and Jack is thankful for him every day.

It’s the first thing he’s been thankful for in a while.

More often than not, he comes home from his afternoon class to a boxer-clad Shitty blowing smoke out their open window. Jack doesn't smoke with him and Shitty never asks him to, but there's something about it that settles his nerves. He doesn't know if it's because Shitty doesn't walk on eggshells around him or if it's the contact high or if it's something else, but it works. 

They go to practice and they go to class and things are fine. Jack lights up the ice and aces his tests and it's good, it's good, even if it isn't what it was supposed to be.

Then Kent scores his first goal. 

The message he leaves that night just says, “I keep looking for you on the ice. I don’t know how to make that stop.”

Jack puts his head between his knees and counts his breathing. Shitty doesn’t say a word, just muscles him into bed and spoons up behind him, arms wrapped tight around him. Jack lets the touch ground him, lets everything fade back out. They fall asleep like that.

It’s not a thing, except for the part where it keeps happening, through the end of the year and into the next. 

Shitty doesn’t ask, doesn’t ask, doesn’t ask.

Jack tells him anyway. 

He’s got Shitty’s moustache tickling between his shoulderblades when he says, “It was just so much, you know?”

Shitty’s arms tighten but he’s quiet, waits for Jack to continue.

“Everyone wanted things from me that I didn’t know how to give. And what I could give never felt like enough.” He pauses to organize his thoughts. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I was just trying to slow everything down.”

“You don't have to tell me, but, Jack. Who are the messages from?”

Shitty doesn't push, never pushes. So Jack plays the latest one, the one that says, “I hope the semester’s going well for you, and I hope you guys beat Boston this weekend” and then, quietly, “I love you, Zimms.”

Shitty thinks it over for a minute.

“Do you love him?”

Jack shakes his head. “I always felt like I should.”

Shitty pushes off the bed so that he can look Jack in the eye.

“Listen to me: you don’t owe anyone a goddamn thing. The only person you need to take care of is yourself. And you are enough, you hear me Zimmermann? You are enough.”

He says it so fiercely, like he’s daring Jack to disagree with him. Jack doesn’t disagree with him.

Jack kisses him.

“Sorry,” he says after and Shitty smirks at him.

“Don’t apologize, I know I’m irresistible.”

Jack shoves him off the bed and listens to him laugh from the floor.

He's expecting it to make things weird but nothing changes at all and Jack is grateful for how unflappable Shitty is.

They do beat Boston, but they drop the next two. It means they don’t make the playoffs, but that’s okay.

It really is okay.

The team gives Jack the captaincy. When he looks around the room, he knows that this was not a unanimous thing and he digs his fingers into the podium to keep them from fluttering as he thanks everyone.

That night, Shitty doesn’t crawl into bed with him, instead sits on the edge of his own bed and says, “You do actually deserve this. You earned it.”

And Jack knows that. He does. But it’s good to hear Shitty say it.

Freshman year ends with little excitement and Jack goes back to Montreal. He works out, helps his mother make dinner, skypes with Shitty and it’s all rather uneventful.

Jack gets a text the day Kent wins the Calder.

It says _I forgive you. For everything._

Jack’s breath rattles in his chest as his fingers fumble over his phone.

_Congrats on the hardware, Kenny. You deserve it._

He’s not expecting a response, but his phone buzzes almost immediately.

_It was supposed to be yours._

Jack texts back, _I’m glad it isn’t._

He’s surprised to find how much he means it.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm embarrassing [here](http://fadeastride.tumblr.com) on a daily basis.


End file.
